I'm guessing you've recently heard about GURPS, or maybe
you've played it with somebody, and are wondering what it is and what
books are worth buying. Perhaps you just want to check it out, but don't know
where to begin. Or perhaps you've heard of GURPS but dismissed it for some
reason, in which case I'm hoping to dissuade you of that opinion. I'm assuming
that you know that GURPS stands for Generic Universal
RolePlaying System, that you know what
a Roleplaying Game is, but that you just haven't had a formal introduction to GURPS.

Here I hope to give you that introduction and provide you a bit of a roadmap, not just to
the GURPS rules, but also to the GURPSpublications. One of the
daunting things about buying into a new game can be in knowing which expansions to buy
and which ones are useful for what kinds of games, so I hope to ease that pain a little.
After I go over the basics of the rules I attempt to give you that roadmap to the various
publications below.

An Abundance of Options

As a roleplaying game GURPS is far more of a toolkit than many other games.
It is designed to let you customize the game to your own expectations, whether you
want to play cinematic action heroes, comic book superheroes, gritty street dealing
cyberpunks, realistic science fiction astronauts or galaxy hopping wanderers.
And, of course, it can do fantasy - from a low-powered more "realistic" medieval
adventure to
high-powered dungeon delving. Many of the rules are written to be
"modular," designed for gritty realism or for cinematic
action, and many character traits are meant to be used only in certain kinds of
games. While many of these rules are demarcated as being optional or cinematic,
admittedly a better job could have been done in doing so, and in separating the realistic
rules from cinematic ones. The same thing goes with character traits; as a reference
it's more convenient to have a large alphabetical list of traits, but on first
reading of the rules including all the exotic, paranormal, and cinematic traits
along with all the mundane ones sometimes gives readers the idea that all of
these rules and traits are meant to be used together, when in fact they are not.

Worse, some people get overwhelmed by all the options
available. Many games back-load the complicated rules where "such and such
ability is only available at 5th Level" and the rule itself isn't even listed until
you get to 5th Level abilities. Being a point-buy system GURPS
front-loads that complexity. If you know what you're doing
with the game this can be a good thing, but it can be a bad thing if it gives you the impression that the rules
are more complex than they actually are or if all the options distract you from the end goal of having fun.

Personally, I see the toolkit approach as one of GURPS
greatest strengths as a game system. However, it is undeniable that all
the options provide a steep learning curve for
newcomers to GURPS, which some people see as a weakness and does make it a
bit of a stumbling point of the game line.
The most important thing to remember as you're reading the rules for the first
time is that this is your game and that you get to pick and choose which
traits and rules to use. Don't let yourself get overwhelmed by the plethora of
options.

GURPS does offer a way to cut through the options
using Worldbooks and Campaign Frameworks
which make many of the choices for you about which traits, rules, technology,
equipment, races, and even character types are
appropriate for the gameworld.

Popular Myth-conceptions

One of the popular misconceptions about GURPS is that all the fiddly bits
are required to be used, or in assuming that because GURPS
has all those fiddly bits that means that the rules are overly complicated.
These are far from the truth, and in fact many of the optional rules serve to
reduce the complexity of the game in play. Another one can be summed up with
the long running joke in the RPG community that "you need to know calculus
in order to play GURPS" (see the picture to the right). This is
categorically not true; GURPS uses a fair bit of math but all of it is basic
addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division.

One of the places this was unfortunately reinforced, and which detractors
will often point to, was in the book Vehicles for
GURPS 3rd Edition. Vehicles required
a lot of math, but almost all of it was just basic addition,
subtraction, multiplication, and division. It used square roots in a few
places (even the cheapest calculator could handle those), and cube
roots for one calculation, but provided a lookup table so that readers
weren't required to actually calculate cube roots. Further, Vehicles
itself was never required to play GURPS; it was essentially its own
mini-game for people that liked designing Vehicles, the final result of
which were compatible with the GURPS rules. Unfortunately, this preconception
often times gets passed around and unfairly colors people's opinion of the game
before they've even read it.

Almost all of the math that GURPS does use is front-loaded during
character creation, the most complex of which usually shows up when designing
super powers or other characters with lots of highly customized abilities.
The worst of this math can be significantly reduced by using a computer
program to help you and your players make characters (see
GURPS Character Assistant and GURPS Character Sheet under
GM Advice & Toolsbelow).
During play the most complicated thing you will usually need to do is add up a few
cumulative skill modifiers (e.g. +3 for aim, -5 for range, -2 for cover, total is
-4 to skill). Everything else is generally a table lookup. i.e converting a distance
to a target in yards into a range penalty would requiring looking up the range on
the Speed/Range table and reading off the corresponding penalty;
many people never realize that the table itself is actually logarithmic
(nor do they need to know to use the table). In play GURPS is
actually far less complicated than it may seem.

By far the easiest way to learnGURPS is to
find a group that already plays it and join in. Like any other skill, or the
rules to any other game, it is best learned directly from a teacher. Of course,
that's not always possible, in which case the best method is to start reading
over the rules and then, if you wish, go over some online resources with combat and play
examples. Then, of course, playGURPS. It is a game, after all, and
most people don't truly understand how a game works until after they've
played it and seen the rules in action.

For the reading, start with GURPS Lite which is a
free 32 page PDF with a
condensed version of the rules. After that you can then move on to one of the
fuller editions of the rules, which I discuss below.
For online resources there are a multitude of websites discussing GURPS.

This section is a description of
the basics of playing GURPS.
If you already know how to
play you can skip ahead.

In GURPS Characters tend to be fairly detailed, so character creation can
be a significant part of playing the game. The game does front-load some of the
complexity into character creation, but it pays off by making actual gameplay
simpler. Various books also offer ways of simplifying character creation.

During character creation you use character points to buy character
abilities. The GM gives each player is a set number of points, giving them equal
access to character traits. Those traits include Attributes, Advantages, Skills,
and Spells. You can also get more points if you burden your character with Disadvantages
(or lowered Attributes) which have a negative point cost but allow you
to spend more points on positive traits. Disadvantages can also give you incentive to
roleplay aspects of your character's personality which the GM may reward you for. If you want
to build a character who is strong you are free to purchase a high strength; if
you want them to be skilled with a crossbow, able to backstab, cast a few
spells, and be proficient with an Axe you can do all of that as well. The only
limit is the point budget the GM sets and your imagination.

It is important to note that equal access to abilities does
not mean equal outcome or equal "power." Some characters may be more
"powerful," especially if the GM doesn't design his adventures in such
a way to allow each character to use his abilities. If one character has a lot
of combat abilities and another has a lot of social abilities the GM needs to
give the group both social and combat encounters or else one of the characters
is going to seem more "powerful" than the other.

GURPS does not use "classes" to limit what
abilities are available for your character. This means it is up to the GM to set
limits on what abilities he wishes to allow in his game, or else he may wind up
with a chromed-up cyber-punker in his fantasy campaign. Most GURPS books
include Character Templates which are similar to "classes" in
other systems. There may be Doctor, Healer, Knight, or
Astronaut templates available depending on the book and world background.
The GM may write his own templates for use in the game as well. However, unless
the GM decides to do so, it is not mandatory to use a character template when
making a character, nor is it necessary to stick to the template verbatim, even
if you are using it as a guide to creating a character. If you have the points
you can take any ability the GM allows. Some templates, and indeed some
worldbooks, offer Character Lenses to further customize character
templates. These lenses are a sort of mini-character template which you add to
the character that focuses in on a few aspects of the character for greater
customization.

GURPSdoes use "races," or Racial Templates,
in some worldbooks allowing players to play non-humans. Normally all of the
traits on a racial template, positive and negative, must be taken if you
want to be a member of that race. Some of the disadvantageous traits
may be "bought off" at the GM's discretion; this can be
useful if you don't want to play a Greedy Dwarf or a Nature Loving Elf.
Some advantageous traits can be removed, giving point back. For instance a
member of a race with two extra arms may have lost one of them in combat,
meaning that this particular member of the race actually only has one extra arm.

Some books, particularly the Campaign Framework books,
make character templates mandatory and even limit what out-of-template abilities
may be purchased for a character. This is particularly true of the Dungeon
Fantasy line, where for niche protection the character templates are
designed along the lines of "classes," and each player will choose a
template for his character. This is used as a shortcut to game simplification
and balance, allowing each player a limited selection of abilities and protecting
their niche within the game, giving everyone a chance to shine and making character
creation easier for everyone, particularly new players. Even in these games there's
no reason why a group is forced to used these templates, and indeed a group of
experienced players can freeform design their characters if everyone wants to.
Or a GM might allow players to "multi-class" their characters or give
them access to abilities outside of their template; in fact half of the supplement
Dungeon Fantasy 3: The Next Level is devoted to Mixed-Professions Lenses
(the Dungeon Fantasy equivalent of "multi-classing").

The basics of gameplay in GURPS is relatively simple as well. All dice
rolls use six-sided dice, with 3d6 being used for most rolls except damage.
Most of the time you will have an attribute ranging from 8-15 or a skill or other
ability ranging from 5-20 (with values centering around 11-13, a bit higher for
experienced characters or core abilities). You will take 3d6 and try to roll
equal to or under the target number (rolling low is good). Particularly
tricky uses of the skill or ability will give you a penalty to the roll, while
the occasional easy use will give you a bonus. For example, if your skill is 19
but you are doing it in extremely difficult circumstances the GM may give you a
-7 penalty, meaning the target number is 19-7=12. So you need to roll 12 or
less on 3d6 to succeed. Damage rolls range from 1d6 to 3d6 for most archaic
weapons, but can range upwards of 6d6×2 or more for some guns and beam
weapons, and may have a small bonus or penalty damage applied after the roll;
e.g. a damage of 2d-2 means roll 2d6 then subtract 2 from the result while
6d×2 means roll 6d6 and then double the result. Fortunately, armor has
a Damage Resistance (DR) which you subtract from any damage before applying
it against your Hit Points (HP), and high-tech armor tends to have enough DR
to protect you against similarly high-tech weapons. The last type of roll you
might perform is a Reaction roll; these are made when meeting an NPC who
doesn't know you and the GM doesn't have a pre-determined reaction towards
your character, so see if the NPC is going to reactive positively or negatively
towards you. Many advantages give a bonus to this roll and many disadvantages
give a penalty - Reputation, social Status, Rank, Odious Personal Habits, etc.
You roll 3d6, add any bonuses and subtract penalties that apply, and the higher
the final roll the better the reaction.

A further discussion of gameplay can be found in my
One Page GURPS
handout as well as "Mook" Wilson's
New to GURPS
series of articles. GURPS Lite contains a free
presentation of many of these rules.

GURPS is currently in its 4th Edition,
but has actually changed relatively
little between editions over the years. From 1st
to 2nd to 3rd Edition the
only major change was in how ranged combat works. There were production changes,
as well, moving from a boxed set with booklets in the first two editions to a
softbound book in 3rd Edition
(and later a hardbound). 3rd Edition
also accumulated two Compendiums of extra rules, which became core requirements
for many expansion books.

The changes for 4th Edition
were somewhat more substantial, but the core of the rules stayed
remarkably similar. By far the biggest change between editions was
organizational, moving most of the rules from the Compendiums into
the core rulebooks, rewriting some rules for clarity.

One important change in 4th
Edition is that the Attribute and Skill costs were tweaked to better
reflect their utility. IQ and DX increased in cost slightly, ST and HT
were reduced. Physical skills were reduced in cost while Mental skills
were increased so that all skills now use the same cost progression.
Lifting ST was also changed to a quadratic formula (so how much you can
lift went from "ST x Something" to "ST x ST x Something").
This significantly reduced the ST required to make extremely large creatures –
I provide a ST conversion sheet
on my website to help in quickly converting animals, monsters, and NPCs over to 4e.

Perhaps the most significant changes to the rules was the removal of Passive
Defense (PD) from armor, which was supposed to represent the chance of an
attack glancing off of the armor. Instead, in 4th EditionActive Defenses (Dodge, Block, and Parry) get a flat +3 bonus instead of adding
PD (if doing a quick conversion a 3rd Edition
NPC give them a +3 to the defenses that are listed in the book).

Beam weapon damage was also reduced (and armor divisors
added), and the rules governing the way lasers and shotguns work were
changed significantly. Some armor also had Damage Resistance (DR)
tweaked. Due to these changes using stats for weapons and armor from
3rd Edition sourcebooks is not
recommended; if possible find the corresponding entries from a
4th Edition sourcebook.

Another substantial change is that Hit Points (HP) is based on Strength (ST)
and Fatigue Points (FP) is based on Health (HT),
instead of vice-versa. Earlier editions sometimes referred to rules where
you'd lose a point of HT when what they meant was that you'd lose a point
of HP, or in other words take a point damage. Similarly, the rules would
sometimes say to lose a point of ST, when what they meant is to lose a FP.
In GURPS you will rarely, if ever, lose an actual point from an attribute.

Because many of the changes were fairly minor it is remarkably easy to
use many 3rd Edition books in 4th
Edition. The ones that are less usable tend to be the Catalog
books, with lists of equipment, animals and monsters, or Character Templates. If
you are interested in using any 3rd Edition material
in a 4th
Edition game there is a free GURPS
Update PDF which can help you convert characters and NPCs. There were
also some substantial changes to the way various kinds of "powers" are
handled in 4th
Edition, which affects books which include a substantial amount of Psionics,
Supers, and Cybernetics and would require more translation work.

Hands down I suggest that you start with the current
GURPS 4th Edition.
It's been out for almost 15 years and is well supported. There are
NO plans to replace it with a 5th
Edition. However, there is a huge collection
of books for GURPS 3rd Edition which are worth buying and using. The differences
between editions are often times subtle, but are not fundamental. Some 3rd
Edition supplements require conversion work or are fairly incompatible, but most
can be used with 4th Edition with little or
no effort. Of particular note for their usefulness and well regarded across the industry,
are the collection of Historical supplements. They are generally well written
and well researched, with most of the material presented in a manner that could be used in
4th Edition, or indeed in any roleplaying game.

Probably the best place to start would be with GURPS Lite, which is a
free 32 page PDF containing a highly
condensed subset of the GURPS rules. This will give you a taste of
the full game and give you a good idea of how it works. If you are ready to
try your hand at running an adventure your next stop should be the free adventure
Caravan to Ein Arris
which is designed to be an introduction to GURPS. It follows the creation
and travel of a large caravan across a desert which the PCs will get a job
working on. I converted some Sample Characters
from the old Basic Set to GURPS 4th Edition, which will
make good starting characters for Caravan to Ein Arris.

Where you go from there depends on what kinds of games you want to run and
how much money you're willing to spend. The most obvious place to start with is the
two-volume GURPS Basic Set, which is split into Vol. I: Characters
and Vol. II: Campaigns. These volumes are largely divided as
you might expect, with all of the rules for creating a character in the first
volume while all of the rules for running a campaign, including the combat
rules, are in the second volume. Between them they contain pretty much all of the
necessary rules for running a GURPS game in almost any world at almost
any technology level. That's not to say that more detailed
rules expansions covering various subjects aren't available; this is a
roleplaying game so of course there are expansion books, but a GM that's willing
to make it up a little bit as he goes along can make do it with just the Basic
Set. These two books are available in both PDF and color hardcover.

However, the Basic Set is not your only possible entry point into the GURPS rules set.
There are several standalone products which contain a subset of the main rules.
The Discworld Roleplaying Game and the Vorkosigan Saga Sourcebook
and Roleplaying Game each contain a modified and somewhat extended version of the
GURPS Lite rules for playing in the novelized universes of the
Discworld or the
Vorkosigan Saga.

Prime Directive takes largely the same approach for the
Star Fleet Battles
universe, which is loosely based on original series Star Trek. While
Prime Directive is the cheapest entry point to the GURPS
rules, I'm hesitant to recommend it as your first purchase for a number
of reasons. For starters, it is a license of the GURPS rules, being produced by
Amarillo Design Bureau, so it has a look and feel that is somewhat different
from other GURPS products. Due to the odd licensing from Paramount it is
also almost, but not quite, Star Trek. This can be offputting
to some fans of classic Trek. Still, if you are a fan of Star Trek style space opera
it is as good a place to start as any.

The Dungeon Fantasy Roleplaying Game took a
significantly different approach from the other three,
instead recompiling the rules from the GURPS Basic Set and the
previously published GURPS Dungeon Fantasy game line to create a
slimmed down but complete roleplaying game in a box. It leaves out
rules for things like vehicular combat or laser guns so that the box
set can focus on all the rules you need to play a
dungeon delving game – including creating characters, casting spells, and
fighting monsters. It contains five rule books including a first adventure, two double-sided
game maps, a slew of cardboard hero figures, and a set of dice. At the $59.95
retail price point the box set is an excellent bargain for starting your GURPS
adventures, and I highly recommend it for new players.

Almost everything listed on this page can be purchased in PDF
form directly from Steve Jackson Games through their online store
Warehouse 23.
Some of the print books are also available there, while many of the rest can be found through
Amazon's print on demand service.
Many of the PDFs are also listed for sale at
DriveThru RPG.
Prime Directive PDFs can be found on
Warehouse 23,
while the print books can be ordered directly from
Starfleet Games.
GURPS For Dummies can be found in eBook or print form either on
Amazon
or directly
from the publisher.

Of course, many of the print books can be acquired through your Friendly
Local Gaming Store, and whenever possible you should consider ordering through
them. While they may not be the cheapest option and may not be fastest option
they are your Friendly Local Gaming Store, so it's up to you to
support them.

Again, where to go from here is going to depend on what kind of games you
want to run; if you want to make your own game world or use a gameworld
from an existing worldbook; if you want the campaign to center on fighting
demons or on galaxy hopping space opera. One of the biggest mistakes that
new GMs sometimes make is believing that they must use ALL
of the rules, from every book. This is never necessary in any RPG, but
particularly not so in GURPS where the rules are designed to be
somewhat modular and, in some cases, are not really designed to be used
in the same game with other rules. Don't be afraid to pick and choose which
books you'd like to purchase, or even which rules from books you already
own that you'd like to use or exclude from a particular game you're going
to run. Don't be afraid to just run a (slightly) simpler game using just
the Basic Set rules.

When first getting into the system some people have the temptation to pick up a lot
of books, perhaps too many, as this can overload you early on and sometimes leads
the issue of people wanting to cram all of the rules from all of the books they have
into the game. I recommend against this temptation, as it can create a somewhat uneven
gaming experience for both the GM and his players. Instead I suggest that you pick
up only those books that you feel are absolutely necessary in your first game. For
some people this may be just the Basic Set or one of the worldbooks that
includes GURPS Lite. For others, this may be just GURPS Lite and one of
the other worldbooks (though many books may reference abilities or rules not found in
GURPS Lite).

Following is a listing of many of the books available for GURPS broken down into a few broad
categories. This is not meant to be an exhaustive list of every GURPS book that
is available right now, let alone what may be written in the future. Rather, it is a
listing of what I feel are the more important GURPS books. If I have left something
out it shouldn't be taken as me saying that book is not good; it may be because I haven't
updated this article to cover newer releases, because I feel the book is too niche,
or because I simply didn't think to add it.

Nor are the categories rigidly defined. Many books could fit in more than one
category. In fact I have a few listed in more than one, but to keep the lists a
little shorter I try to do this only with the more "core" books that
fit in multiple categories.

This list also focuses heavily on GURPS 4th Edition.
While many 3rd Edition books can be used in
4th Edition with little conversion necessary,
and still cover areas which 4th Edition
does not, I felt it important to focus on the current edition of the game.

Some general advice on which books to purchase are:

Pick up all of the free PDFs you can – I mean, why not?

Consider buying some or all of the books and PDFs listed under GM
Advice & Tools.
They offer strong advice for running a GURPS game, and indeed for
playing Roleplaying games in general. These books and tools can be used to help you streamline
and simplify your game.

At first, pick up at most 1-2 Rulebooks and/or Catalogs
that support the types of games you would like to run. For a fantasy game
maybe get GURPS Magic and GURPS Martial Arts, for a Sci-Fi
game get GURPS Spaceships and GURPS Ultra-Tech, etc. As I said
earlier, the Basic Set already contains most of what you need to run
a game in most genres, and many worldbooks include short catalogs which can
be used to supplement the Basic Set.

While not absolutely necessary, consider picking up one of the following:

A Genre book, for helping construct your own game world
for that genre.

A Worldbook for running a game in that world. Perhaps
two books from the same setting if it's particularly appealing to you or a
conversion book is available for a 3rd Edition
worldbook.

A Historical book for gaming in that era, keeping in mind that most are 3rd Edition
and you will need to watch out for conversion issues.

2-3 PDFs for a Campaign Framework for running a game
within that campaign frame. Start with the character
creation book, then get the GM advice book if that framework appeals to
you, picking up more if you wish. These game lines are made up of
somewhat smaller and cheaper PDFs, making it
easier to pick up 2-3 to start your game.

GURPS Adaptations, to help convert your favorite fictional
world to GURPS.

The Books

These books offer advice to the GM on how to run a GURPS game, while the utilities
can help him organize and run it. They are generally setting agnostic and don't introduce
too many new rules, instead concentrating on advice on using the GURPS rules more
effectively.

GURPS Adaptations is designed to help you convert
the world from your favorite fictional universe into a usable campaign world. It
offers advice on setting the premise, genre, mood, and theme for a gameworld,
fitting people, places, and things into that world, and of course most
importantly on fitting players characters into that gameworld and on getting
them involved in the action.

Each of these books is the GM advice books for a Genre
Framework series. While each focuses on the types of adventures
that are common within their own genre, most of the advice from each can be
applied to games in other genres.

GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 2: Dungeons contains a plethora of advice
on setting up challenging traps, guidelines on which skills cover which activities, and
divvying up and selling the loot. It also includes a short bestiary of monsters which
could be dropped into a Horror or Space game effortlessly.

Monster Hunters 2: The Mission includes guidelines for handling
investigations, pursuing monsters (or bad guys), and how to handle the eventual confrontation
with them. There's a chapter on handling cinematic combat and another on challenging extremely competent PCs.

These free PDFs offer support the GURPS rules form
the Basic Set.

Combat Cards allows you to print out a set of cards
- about the size of a playing card - each with one of the options you can choose
to perform in combat. For instance, Aim your weapon, Attack with your weapon, or
Move at your top speed towards (or away from) your opponents.

Skill Categories takes the alphabetical skill list from Basic Set:
Characters and categorizes them in a way more useful to reference during
character creation, separating Ranged combat skills from Melee combat skills
from Vehicles skills, and so on.

GURPS Update is a set of conversion guidelines to help
you convert characters from GURPS 3rd Edition
into 4th Edition. It
can be handy if you want to use any 3rd Edition
supplements, helping you convert NPCs as well.

Range Ruler is a ruler using hexagon markers and range penalties from the Speed/Range table
to help you calculate range penalties quickly if you are using the mapped combat rules.

GURPS Character Assistant 4 (GCA4) is the
official character creation program for GURPS 4th Edition.
It supports all of the core books and most of the major supplements to the game.
Liberal use of a character creation program can help you streamline what many
people consider the most daunting part of GURPS. Runs on Windows only,
but is compatible with everything from Windows 95 all the way through Windows 10.

GURPS Character Sheet (GCS) is a free character
creation program for GURPS 4th Edition. While
it not the official program, it does have two advantages over GCA4. First, it is
free. Second, it was written in Java, which means you can use it on a Mac or
Linux with far fewer issues.

Chock-full of useful advice on customizing GURPS to be run in
the style you desire, including chapters on character creation, combat, and game
balance. This book is an excellent reference to any GURPS GM, regardless of
experience with the game.

Power-Ups 5: Impulse Buys introduces a new system for spending earned
character points to gain in-game benefits – for instance trading character points
for a guaranteed success on a skill roll. While it may not be of use for every
campaign, for a certain style of gameplay – particularly
fast paced action – this volume can be invaluable.

Character Templates can be used by GMs to speed up character creation, enforce
niche protection, and balance out a party of PCs. This guidebook for Game Masters
helps in creating Character Templates appropriate for their campaign,
going over how to create and balance them in some detail.

Like other ...For Dummies books this book is written with
people unfamiliar with the system in mind. It provides an interesting outsiders
look on the rules system in the GURPS Basic Set 4th Edition.
Of all of the GM Advice this is one I probably found the least useful,
and has probably not aged as well as more recent books. However, for a new
player it can still be quite useful in helping to dissect the system.

While not a GURPS book, Robin's Laws of Good Game Masteringwas published by
Steve Jackson Games and it is an excellent guidebook for game mastering,
somehow providing two pounds of advice in a one pound package. This book will
improve your GMing (or Dungeon Mastering, or Storytelling, or Refereeing) no
matter which roleplaying system is your favorite.

Rulebooks offer new or expanded rules that cover a variety of topics,
such as entire new magic systems, rules for grappling in combat, or building and
fighting with spaceships. These should always be treated as optional expansions,
seasoning you can add to a campaign to achieve a particular flavor.

GURPS Magic provides an extension of the
"default" spell-based magic system found in Chapter 5 of
Basic Set, providing an additional 800+ spells, a half-dozen more colleges of
magic, and adding rules for creating and using magic items.

Magic Spell Charts is a free PDF and extension of the main book, providing
spell prerequisite charts for all of the spells in GURPS Magic like the one
found on p. 238 of that book.

Other PDFs in the series further develop the spell-based
magic system offering more spells within their themes.

GURPS Magic for GURPS 3rd Edition is
generally compatible with the rules in GURPS 4th Edition,
but contains about of half the spells from the newer Magic provides. I do
recommend getting the 4th Edition book, but for
people wanting to save a few dollars or who want to offer a cut-down spell list
for their players it can act as a good resource for the game.

GURPS Martial Arts is perhaps one of the more
overlooked of the "primary" rule books, doing for warriors what
GURPS Magic does for wizards - offering more combat options, expanding on
cinematic rules, and offering stats for a considerable number of archaic melee
and ranged weapons for your warriors to arm themselves with. Of particular
note, it expands on the rules for the quintessential cinematic advantages
Trained By A Master, Weapon Master, and Heroic Archer, making this book almost
essential for running cinematic games which will feature armed and unarmed
melee combat.

Martial Arts: Technique Cheat-Sheet is a free PDF which
provides a reference list of all the combat techniques found in the book (a
"technique" is a special use of a skill; for instance
"disarming" is a common technique of most melee combat skills,
allowing you to disarm your opponent).

Other books in the series focus in on describing a specific
group of fighting styles or on expanding rules for a particular type of combat.

Mass Combat provides rules and guidelines for managing the outcome of truly large
scale combats, from skirmishing bands of low-tech warriors up to and beyond motorized
high-tech armies while also keeping an eye on how hero characters can affect
the outcome of those battles.

Mass Combat in Space from Pyramid #3/30 provides rules for
using Spaceships designs in the Mass Combat system.

Often called the "third volume of the Basic Set"GURPS Powers presents a system for creating powers using the GURPS
advantages. It expounds on how to modify existing advantages to function in
entirely new or different ways using the GURPS enhancement and limitation
system, and offers many new enhancements and limitations in order to do so.
This book is a must-have if you plan on including any type
of super-powers in a game - from running a Supers to Psionics to including
powers of Elemental or Divine origin.

Other books in the series focus in on creating a Powers
framework for one specific power source.

Each volume of the Power-Ups series provides methods of
customizing characters. Most of the books in the series concentrate on a
particular kind of character trait, collecting previously published character
traits of that type, adding new traits, and expanding the rules for that trait type.

Power-Ups 1: Imbuements describes an entirely new method of
empowerment - imbuing mundane items with mythical power. It does this through the
use of Imbuement skills, each of which allows you to add extra effects onto
weapons and other equipment.

Power-Ups 5: Impulse Buys introduces a new system for spending earned
character points to gain in-game benefits – for instance trading character points
for a guaranteed success on a skill roll. While it may not be of use for every
campaign, for a certain style of gameplay – particularly
fast paced action – this volume can be invaluable.

Worth noting is that Power-Ups 7: Wildcard Skills provides an optional
rule that stacks nicely with Impulse Buys, detailing how characters can earn
Wildcard Points which can be spent on Impulse Buys.

GURPS Psionic Powers provides a Powers-based
framework for running characters with psionics in a game. It is essentially an extension
of the psi abilities found in Chapter 6 of the Basic Set.

Psionic Campaigns provides advice for GMs on running Psi-based campaigns as well as
working Psi into other campaign styles.

GURPS Psis is a character creation aid which includes character templates as well as
psionic packages – preselected packages of psi abilities from Psionic Powers ready
to grab-and-go.

Psi-Tech is a catalog book of psi-based equipment and technology.

GURPS Psionics is an interesting book for
GURPS 3rd Edition.
It provides a Power Level + Skill approach to psionic powers
that is different from the one found in the
Basic Set 4th Edition and
Psionic Powers. Where the psionic abilities in
4th Edition are based on
advantages, the leveled powers from GURPS Psionics
use leveled advantages for each power, with the power level of the ability set
by the level of the advantage you purchase and your capabilities within each
power determined by which skills you have learned and your skill levels with them.
It is, in fact, an extension of the psionic system found in the
Basic Set 3rd Edition,
and because it provides a complete system for handling psionic
powers it can easily be used as an alternate psionic system in
4th Edition
without needing any real conversion work.

This series offers expanded rules for an often overlooked
aspect of RPGs: social interactions. GURPS Social Engineering provides
the basic framework for the rules, while other books in the series focus in on
social interactions within particular sub-cultures.

GURPS Spaceships provides rules for building, operating,
and fighting with spaceships using technology from the mundane through
the wildest space opera futures (or long, long ago past).

Other PDFs in the line expand upon those rules for particular
types of spaceships as well as offering dozens of example spaceships from all
different technological backgrounds (over 250 in total).

Spaceships 7: Divergent and Paranormal Tech probably expands the available
ship systems and options more than any other supplement (or, indeed, all of the others
combined).

Mass Combat in Space from Pyramid #3/30 provides
rules for using Spaceships designs in the GURPS Mass Combat
system.

Alternate Spaceships from Pyramid #3/34 offers expanded
rules for ground and water vehicles (wheeled, tank treads, submarines, etc.) as well as
gas guzzling power plants.

Mecha Operations from Pyramid #3/40
expands on rules for designing and using Mecha in your game.

GURPS Spaceships Design Spreadsheet is an extremely sophisticated spreadsheet
I wrote and maintain which helps you design ships using all of the optional rules,
including options of my own. The most up to date version is in Excel, but there is
an OpenOffice version available as well.

Tactical Shooting provides expanded rules for realistic gun fighting, covering facts and myths of guns.
Using real military and police tactics for handling guns, the book gives advice for clearing rooms and
buildings, formation fighting with tactical advances and retreats, and urban warfare. It offers a chapter on
new and expanded character traits and techniques involving firearms and combat styles and another chapter
cataloging weapons designed and improvised for use in tactical combat.

Gun Fu expands on rules for cinematic gunplay, offering tips on handling trick shooting, dual weilding
pistols, handling classing showdowns. It, too, has a chapter on new and expanded character traits and techniques
involving firearms, this time with an eye towards allowing cinematic combat and style; and it also has a chapter
cataloging more weapons and equipment for supporting cinematic shooting.

GURPS Thaumatology is a mixed bag of magical marvels. On the one hand
it includes rules for expanding upon as well as tweaking the default spell-based
magic system, including a variation on S. John Ross' wildly popular
Unlimited Mana rules and deeper discussions of variants of
Clerical and Ritual magic systems. These make this book a good companion
for those using the default magic system from GURPS Magic.

On the other hand, it also includes rules for several wildly different alternate
magic systems, ready for inclusion in your next game. These can offer a vastly different
feel to magic users in your game.

Other books in the series cover a variety of subjects. Age of Gold
and Alchemical Baroque each provide magic-centric campaign worlds.

Chinese Elemental Power and Sorcery each
provide a Powers-based magic system. Chinese Elemental Powers
builds a system with a distinct Chinese and elemental flavor, while Sorcery
tries to keep the spell-casting flavor of GURPS Magic in the form of a
Powers-based framework. Sorcery: Protection and Warning Spells
expands upon the Sorcery system, adding more spells from the
Protection and Warning college.

Magical Styles provides a method of organizing spells,
skills, and abilities into arcane arts similar to martial arts styles.

Ritual Path Magic provides a unique standalone magic system, originally
conceived for the Monster Hunters series but made more
generic and expanded upon here. Essentially you have a few core skills which you
can combine in different ways to achieve magical effects, making casting spells
"an agreement between the player and GM." This is a more improvisational
style of magic than the others which I would call akin to the Sphere magic
from Mage: The Ascension.

Urban Magics explores how magic affects cities and vice-versa.

Catalog books offer lists of stuff, a catalog of equipment for your
characters to purchase or creatures for them to fight. Many books from other series also
count as Catalog books, though for brevity I am not listing them here.

This book catalogs Biotechnology of the future, covering subjects such as
genetic engineering, modified animals and humans, medical
technology, and drugs. Probably most notable for players, it includes Bioroids,
and Bio-mod enhancements, allowing characters to improve their weak
meatbags.

These creature catalogs will make you worry about what
goes bump in the night. The original GURPS Creatures of the Night is a
GURPS 3rd Edition book, but is still fairly usable
in 4th Edition. Subsequent volumes in the series
are shorter but are original 4th Edition releases.

Dragons provides an examination of dragon mythology
throughout history and cultures from ancient Sumer, Egypt, China, and medieval
Europe. It holds the distinction of being both the last GURPS 3rd Edition
book published as well as the first 4th Edition book published,
with the main text being written for 3rd Edition
but an appendix converting all of the statistics to 4th Edition.
The book is written with full character write-ups for many types of dragons,
making them accessible as PCs, usable as important NPCs, or monsters to slay. It
also covers a variety of human character archetypes, from Dragonslayers to
Dragon Blooded.

GURPS High-Tech covers weapons, armor, equipment, and
general technology from TL 5 (the industrial revolution, muskets) through to TL
8 (modern day). If the equipment lists in the Basic Set aren't enough for you
then this volume is a must.

High-Tech Weapon Tables is a companion which
collects all the weapon tables from the book in one place.

Other books in the series provide even more guns, usually
describing them in terms of real-world weapons instead of the sometimes generic
names given in High-Tech.

GURPS Low-Tech covers weapons, armor, equipment,
and technology from TL 0 (stone age) through TL 3 (late medieval). It
encompasses almost all of the weapons previously included in GURPS Martial
Arts while providing many more. It also offers an entirely new and extremely
detailed armor creation system, which was later developed in subsequent books.

Companion 1: Philosophers and Kings examines how
technology affects politics and the building of monuments in the low-tech world.

Companion 2: Weapons and Warriors offers some expanded
rules for combat gear, weapons, armor, and fortifications. It is possibly the
most useful of the companions for your typical RPG group.

Companion 3: Daily Life and Economics delves into how
technology affected life of the average man (and woman) in a low-tech world.

Instant Armor takes the armor creation system from the
main book and offers dozens (if not hundreds) of ready-made armor
pieces.

Loadouts: Low-Tech Armor takes a different approach,
instead offering worked historical examples of entire Armor Suits throughout the
ages. Where Instant Armor might offer stats for a pot-helm and breast
plate Loadouts provides the stats for an entire suit that might be
worn by an Armored Knight of
a European Crusader, or a Roman Legionary, or an ancient Mycenaean.

Fantasy-Tech 1 & 2 cover a variety of archaic
weapons with a fantasy element to them, either due to their fancifulness or
because weapons of that style just weren't used historically (even if they
sometimes show up in movies and TV). Examples would include Archimedes Burning
Mirrors, full-metal versions of traditionally wooden weapons (such as metal staves or axe
handles) or double-ended spears.

The three books in the Magic Items series contain an assortment of unique
mid- to high-level magic items, intended to be great treasures or rewards for
intrepid adventurers.

While these books
were written for GURPS 3rd Edition most of the
items will work fine in 4th Edition, with the
major exceptions being armor and weapons. For armor the PD
(Passive Defense) stat has been removed from the game and can simply be ignored
except in the case of shields, which provide a Defense Bonus (DB) similar to
PD, but generally is lower than PD, and may have enchantments which increase
that DB; the GMs will need to use their discretion in converting shield PD into
DB. Some weapon statistics have changed between editions, so the
underlying weapon may need to be updated and the magic item's stats
reconsidered.

GURPS Spaceships provides rules for building, operating,
and fighting with spaceships using technology from the mundane through
the wildest space opera futures (or long, long ago past).

Other PDFs in the line expand upon those rules for particular
types of spaceships as well as offering dozens of example spaceships from all
different technological backgrounds (over 250 in total).

Spaceships 7: Divergent and Paranormal Tech probably expands the available
ship systems and options more than any other supplement (or, indeed, all of the others
combined).

Mass Combat in Space from Pyramid #3/30 provides
rules for using Spaceships designs in the GURPS Mass Combat
system.

Alternate Spaceships from Pyramid #3/34 offers expanded
rules for ground and water vehicles (wheeled, tank treads, submarines, etc.) as well as
gas guzzling power plants.

Mecha Operations from Pyramid #3/40
expands on rules for designing and using Mecha in your game.

GURPS Spaceships Design Spreadsheet is an extremely sophisticated spreadsheet
I wrote and maintain which helps you design ships using all of the optional rules,
including options of my own. The most up to date version is in Excel, but there is
an OpenOffice version available as well.

This catalog of future technology will help you outfit your adventurers with equipment that may be
available from the very near future such as personal robots and smart houses to superscience devices
that may never be available like nuclear dampers and force field belts. Most importantly for
adventurers it includes all manner of weaponry and armor as well as cybernetics implants.
If you plan on running a sci-fi game this book is a near necessity.

Weapon Tables is a companion which collects all of the weapon tables throughout the book
into one place.

Genre books offer advice on creating and running campaigns in a specific genre. They
may include rules expansion which are useful for the genre, racial templates, suggestions
on organizations and types of characters, discussions on the types of campaigns that
are common in that genre as well as advice for running games in various styles. Many also
include at least one example campaign world, ready to begin gaming in.

GURPS Fantasy offers advice on planning a fantasy
campaign, creating a fantasy world, fitting magic within that world, what kind
of races will populate the world, what timeframes the world should be set in,
and what types of settlements will exist. It provides example racial templates
for most of the "trope" fantasy races as well as character templates
for most of the standard adventurer types. It also discusses what types of
storylines and plots can fit within the campaign. Lastly, it offers the sample
setting called Roma Arcana, a Roman Empire inspired fantasy setting.

Fantasy: Portal Realms explores another common fantasy
trope: modern day adventurer lost in a fantasy world.

GURPS Horror is "systemic dissection" of
the horror genre, including the types of characters you're likely to find in a
typical horror game. It includes discussions of what goes bump in the night,
including stats for many trope monsters to throw at your players, and goes
on to discuss narrative structure for different types of game, antagonists, and
dropping horror elements into other types of games (space, fantasy, etc). It
finishes up with a couple worked example campaign frames to drop
unsuspecting players into.

The Madness Dossier is a worked horror worldbook in
which history is a lie and the players are fighting against a long forgotten
evil that is starting to step back into our world.

GURPS Infinite Worlds is a combination Genre Book
and Worldbook. As a Genre Book it offers
advice on running games covering all sorts of time-and-dimension
traveling frames, with discussions on alternate worlds, different implications of
time travel and different ways that time travel can be handled. It even includes
a few example campaign frames for time or dimension hopping games. Much of this
discussion came from the previous publication GURPS Time Travel for
GURPS 3rd Edition.

However, the centerpiece of the book is the Infinity Unlimited
campaign setting. This campaign frame is both a setting and a meta-setting,
incorporating all other settings. Taking place on an Earth that discovered
dimensional travel into alternate timelines, essentially each destination
world could be an entire campaign world of it's own. In fact, you could
use any other campaign world as one of the infinite worlds for an adventure
destination. In this way it incorporates all other campaign worlds under a
single umbrella and shows off one of GURPS greatest strengths –
the ability to run almost any type of campaign from any technological and
world background, all with one set of rules.

Other books in the series explore one or more alternate Earths which can be
used as an adventure destination or as the basis for an entire campaign.

Fantasy: Portal Realms explores another common fantasy
trope: modern day adventurer lost in a fantasy world.

Alternate Earths 1 & 2 are GURPS 3rd Edition supplements
each containing a variety of Earths with alternate timelines for the
Infinity Unlimited setting. They contain relatively little that needs
converting to 4th Edition, focusing on the worldbuilding more
than game rules or NPCs.

Timeline presents a historical timeline of
interesting events and possible turning points, the exact places where the PCs
might get involved or an alternate timeline might split, making it an amazing
resource for any time or dimension traveling game.

Who's Who 1 & 2 detail important figures throughout history. While the
figures receive full character write-ups using GURPS 3rd Edition
they can easily be used in 4th Edition with little conversion
work necessary since they are intended to be used as NPCs and their exact point costs
shouldn't matter.

Mysteries is an in-depth
investigation into running crime dramas, police investigations, and good old
fashioned private investigation stories. It has a thorough exposition on the
taxonomy of murders and other crimes, where criminals tend to get it wrong and
are discovered, and how to investigate crimes and round up witnesses and
evidence. It goes on to cover detective stories in different genres, from
modern to sci-fi to fantasy and horror. It wraps up with character templates
covering common genre occupations.

The award winning GURPS Space contains an excellent
discussion for setting up a science fiction universe – what campaign types are
common, the implications of different types of Faster Than Light drives and what
kind of technology is common. It spends nearly 1/3 of it's pages going over
worldbuilding - from stars to worlds to the types of civilizations and
populations likely to be present on them. Following that is a chapter on Alien
Life, which can be used to randomly generate the dominate life forms on the
planet. It goes on to discuss fitting a story into the worlds that you create,
what kinds of societies you may want to use either for the setting for
antagonistic governments that your players can explore. It finishes up with the
Characters chapter which contains a number of character templates for common
archetypes.

The Planetary Record Worksheet is a free PDF worksheet
for recording all of the details or a new star system and worlds you generate
using the world creation chapters from the Space.

So far only a couple of books in Steampunk series have been
released. Settings and Style details how to set the mood, setting, and style of the genre
where the Vehicles details a number of appropriate conveyances for the genre. More
books are due to come.

GURPS Supers covers the genre of four-color comic heroes,
with rules for new powers, new superhuman feats, and suggestions
for running comic book style cinematic campaigns and combat. It includes character templates for the
common archetypes of the genre, as well as advice on designing many of the trope
powers all your favorite comic book heroes have.

Zombies is your guide to running the zombie apocalypse,
from the mindless walking dead to the diseased living corpses, from folklore to
cinema. It includes different kinds of zombies, example zombie
templates, discussions on how to run zombies as antagonists in your games, and different
kinds of zombie campaign frameworks.

Zombies: Day One sketches out eight different zombie
campaign frameworks, from the return of the Necromancer- King to Zombies in
Space.

Worldbooks describe in detail one specific campaign setting. They may include
special or customized rules tweaks for that setting, racial templates, and listings of equipments
and technology that may be unusual or unique to that setting. They usually detail organizations
and political structures, major NPCs, world histories, areas of conflict and areas for adventure.
Worldbooks differ from Genre Books in that they focus on one specific
game world, with any advice on running games being specific to that setting. Generally speaking,
if you pick up the Basic Set and a Worldbook you will have everything you
need to run a GURPS game (though, of course, you can always add more Rulebooks,
use items from Catalogs, and take advice from Genre Books.).

Banestorm was the first settimg ever published for GURPS. In fact, Orcslayer
was the first supplement for both the game world and for GURPS, and was actually published
before the GURPS Box Set 1st Edition was
published (using the rules for Man-To-Man, which was a precursor game to GURPS).
After that came the original edition and then GURPS Fantasy 2nd Edition,
which was a bit of genre book for fantasy and a worldbook for Banestorm,
combined in one. When GURPS 4th Edition
was published they finally decided to separate the genre
book into the title GURPS Fantasy and gave the world of Banestorm it's own book.

Banestorm is set on the world of Yrth, a magical
world which was dominated by the Orcs, who where slowly wiping out the Elves and
Dwarves. To fight back the cult of Dark Elves summoned up a powerful Bane to
wipe out the Orcs, and wipe them out it did. Unfortunately, the critical failure
on the spell casting resulted in ripping open a hole between dimensions,
bringing in humans from medieval Earth, Goblins, Halflings, Reptile Men, and a
variety of other races from a half-dozen other worlds. The Banestorm hit Earth
in 1050, smack dab in the middle of the crusades. It brought forth a great deal
of Christian crusaders and Islamic defenders from the holy land and deposited
them across the continent. To the North barbarians and East-Asians were
deposited, but in much smaller numbers. The primary conflict is between the
three Christian nations (one formerly Islamic) and two Islamic nations, with
outside skirmishes from the barbarians to the North and remaining Orcs from the
West.

Abydos details the city of Abydos, located on
the lake Styx. It is a city where a bastardized version of Christianity has
taken root and death magic is common; in particular, zombie "slaves"
are used throughout the city to do most of the grunt work.

Harkwood, Tredroy, and Orcslayer are
all adventure books with city backgrounds mixed in, describing various locals and events
that the players can get wrapped up in. The first two are for GURPS 3rd
Edition and, as I said, Orcslayer is basically 1st
Edition. All of the adventures in Fantasy Adventures are written so that they
happen on Yrth.

The Discworld Roleplaying Game contains all the
rules necessary to explore the world of Terry Pratchett's Disc. In addition to
describing a full campaign background for the Disc, this book includes a
significantly extended version of the GURPS Lite rules (more of a GURPS
"medium"), including it's own magic system. Don't let Death get you
down; in fact, don't let Death get you at all.

GURPS Infinite Worlds is a combination Genre Book
and Worldbook. As a Genre Book it offers
advice on running games covering all sorts of time-and-dimension
traveling frames, with discussions on alternate worlds, different implications of
time travel and different ways that time travel can be handled. It even includes
a few example campaign frames for time or dimension hopping games. Much of this
discussion came from the previous publication GURPS Time Travel for
GURPS 3rd Edition.

However, the centerpiece of the book is the Infinity Unlimited
campaign setting. This campaign frame is both a setting and a meta-setting,
incorporating all other settings. Taking place on an Earth that discovered
dimensional travel into alternate timelines, essentially each destination
world could be an entire campaign world of it's own. In fact, you could
use any other campaign world as one of the infinite worlds for an adventure
destination. In this way it incorporates all other campaign worlds under a
single umbrella and shows off one of GURPS greatest strengths –
the ability to run almost any type of campaign from any technological and
world background, all with one set of rules.

Other books in the series explore one or more alternate Earths which can be
used as an adventure destination or as the basis for an entire campaign.

Fantasy: Portal Realms explores another common fantasy
trope: modern day adventurer lost in a fantasy world.

Alternate Earths 1 & 2 are GURPS 3rd Edition supplements
each containing a variety of Earths with alternate timelines for the
Infinity Unlimited setting. They contain relatively little that needs
converting to 4th Edition, focusing on the worldbuilding more
than game rules or NPCs.

Timeline presents a historical timeline of
interesting events and possible turning points, the exact places where the PCs
might get involved or an alternate timeline might split, making it an amazing
resource for any time or dimension traveling game.

Who's Who 1 & 2 detail important figures throughout history. While the
figures receive full character write-ups using GURPS 3rd Edition
they can easily be used in 4th Edition with little conversion
work necessary since they are intended to be used as NPCs and their exact point costs
shouldn't matter.

GURPS Mars Attacks is based on the ever popular
Mars Attacks Trading Cards
which have been around for almost 60 years (indecently, the movie was also based on the cards,
while this game is NOT based on the movie at all). The book takes a look at the campier
side of a Martian invasion of Earth.

Prime Directive is a standalone game,
including a slimmed down version of the GURPS rules in the core book. It details
the world of the war game Star Fleet Battles, which through a few odd
licensing deals is itself based on the original Star Trek TV series, being allowed to
use the races, worlds, and technology of the TV series without being able to use the term
"Star Trek" or any of the characters from the TV series, nor anything from the
subsequent movies or TV series. It was written and published by the folks at
Amarillo Design Bureau, so it has a
slightly different layout and feel from any other GURPS books as well as a
slightly "war gamey" feel to the classic Trek setting. Still, it's
the closest we'll ever have to a GURPS Star Trek and is quite useful
for creating a game with the feel of classic Star Trek.

Set in a world where the war is over and the Robots won, Reign of Steel details a world
where humanity is in the minority. However, there's still some hope, as the world has been divided
up by the AI computers into 18 zones, each their own domain controlled by one of the AI's
and its robot minions – and they can't agree on what to do with humanity. Or the rest of
Earth, or how to deal with each other, for that matter. In several of the zones humanity clings
to life, and a few people even thrive. In another zone every microbe has been hunted to extinction,
while in yet another zone the landscape has been returned to nature without human presence. While
the main book is written for GURPS 3rd Edition,
Reign of Steel: Will to Live is a 4th Edition update guide,
allowing you to continue the fight for the future of humanity... or help to wipe it out.

Tales of the Solar Patrol brings out the look and feel of old 1920's & 30's pulp serials
and 1950's space adventure movies and early television. The Solar Patrol travels
the solar system, preventing the Martians from invading or the Venusians from stealing our women.
The theme and artwork of this PDF hits on all cylinders, really bringing the feel of classic
Flash Gordon or Tom Corbett, Space Cadet to your gaming table.

On July 16, 1945 the detonation of the first atom bomb ripped open a hole in
space, creating a Hellstorm seething with magical energy which washed over the
world. Magic has come to the 20th century, and nothing has been the same since. Technomancer
is a setting for GURPS 3rd Edition, with
Pyramid #3/115: Technomancer serving as a conversion guide for
4th Edition.

Set on Earth in 2100 AD, Transhuman Space explores
a future of Transhumanism - a future where advanced Bio-Technology allows you to
sculpt the body you want to be, where advanced AI can be people, and
where people can be AI by getting uploaded into a computer. It is
a future where the solar system has been colonized, but we haven't quite reached
to the stars yet.

GURPS Transhuman Space was originally released for
GURPS 3rd Edition, and the main book (simply titled
Transhuman Space) contains a copy of GURPS Lite 3rd Edition
so that it can be played as a standalone 3rd Edition game. However,
to get full use out of the game you really need expanded rules options (especially for character
creation), which means buying into either
GURPS 3rd or 4th Edition.
The line has seen a large number of supplements for both
3rd and 4th Editions.

Transhuman Space: Changing Times is the 4th Edition
conversion guide. While it contains a synopsis of the setting, the full background of the setting
is presented in the core book which you will probably want to acquire even if you are planning on
running the game in 4th Edition.

The four TeraLogos News supplements are free PDFs
which contain news reports which can be dropped into your game setting or used
as a guideline for updating events that happened after the main book was
released. After those two books and four freebies there are a number of supplements
available, so what you get is entirely dependent on what types of games you'd
like to play in the setting.

Traveller has a long history with GURPS, and indeed
a long long history within the Roleplaying Games industry. The original
version of Traveller was perhaps the very first science fiction roleplaying
game, and many a grognard gamer laments on the days when you got your RPGs in little black books.
GURPS Traveller was released in the heyday of GURPS 3rd Edition,
and had a large number of supplements released. By the time that
GURPS 4th Edition was coming out the license was winding down, and
the slowed production schedule meant that only one book and one PDF was released for the new edition.

The Traveller universe is set in the distant future within a
large interstellar Imperium, controlled by an aristocratic ruling class. The
Imperium is so spread out that the Emperor cannot maintain control over most of
it's parts, so a series of Nobles control regions and then sectors within the
Imperium. Between the infighting of the Nobles and the Capitalist elites,
there is a lot of possibilities for adventure and even exploration within the
Imperium.

GURPS Traveller: Interstellar Wars is set during an earlier era
of the Imperium than the main 3rd Edition timeline, during the
Interstellar Wars era. Interstellar Wars: Combat Counters
gives you a collection of printable combat counters for use in the spaceship
combat rules contained in the Traveller: Interstellar Wars main book.

Psionic Institutes details various institutions which
deal with Psionic abilities in the Traveller universe.

GURPS Traveller: Flare Star is a free PDF adventure
that was written for 3rd
Edition. Most other books in the line are for GURPS 3rd
Edition.

The Vorkosigan Saga Roleplaying Game contains everything necessary to venture into
Lois McMaster Bujold'sVorkosigan Saga universe. In addition to all the information describing the universe
(places of interest, important people to meet, things to do, organizations of
interest) this volume includes an extended version of GURPS Lite tailored
for the Vorkosigan Saga and a slimmed down version of the GURPS Spaceships
rules, containing everything necessary to build and use spaceships from the
Saga.

Not to be overlooked is the catalog of GURPS historical books. These are
some of the best researched gaming books in the industry and cover a large range
of historical eras and cultures. Most of these are for GURPS 3rd Edition, but
are still quite useful as reference material for a GURPS 4th Edition game.
Some, like GURPS Dinosaurs, require a lot of conversion work while with
most others you just need to watch out for character and equipment write-ups, making
them considerably easier to convert.

These books delve not only into the people,
places, and history of their time period but also take a look at the folklore,
mysticism, magic, and fantastical creatures. For example Russia takes a
look at the Baba Yaga figure while Arabian Nights takes a look at animals
and monsters, from real breeds of horses to mythical Djinn. Others, like Robin
Hood and Camelot, deal even more with the folklore and tales and
examine the setting through the different historical lenses through which the
stories have been passed down. Meanwhile, Dinosaurs and
Who's Who 1 & 2 are more Catalogs
of ancient animals and historical figures.

GURPS has a long list of worldbooks published over the years. Many were
conversions of novel series, video games, or even of roleplaying game
settings. Some worldbooks can be used in 4th Edition with
relatively little conversion work necessary while others would require quite a
bit of work. All, however, offer great inspiration and contain a
considerable amount of world history and background as well as style and setting
advice which can be used with little effort.

Autoduel is set after the apocalypse, in a future where survivors duel one
another in armed and armored cars. Based on the classic Car Wars board game.

Detailing the greatest era of conflict the world has ever seen each volume of the
World War II details one front or aspect of the war. The WWII main
book has an overview of the war as well as character templates, a copy of
GURPS 3rd Edition Lite
(available as a free download), and a slimmed down
vehicle design system based on GURPS Vehicles 2nd Edition
for GURPS 3rd Edition.

Templates for GURPS 4th Edition is an unofficial
conversion of all of the Character Templates by Curtis Handsaker, edited by me and hosted
on my website for free.

Hand of Steel covers commando and special forces of the war.

Motor Pool offers an expansion for the Vehicles creation rules.

Weird War II is perhaps my favorite book in the game line, covering all the
occult and just plain weird aspects of the war, some based on
mythology the Nazi's co-opted and believed while other were based on real
but strange inventions and happenings in the war. It could easily be used
to add occult powers, mystic magic, or weird technology into a game. As an
aside, an excellent companion piece to this book is The
Nazi Occult written by several-times GURPS author Kenneth Hite.

The Secret of the Gneisenau is a Weird War II adventure set on a
crippled German warship with some weird technology.

Campaign Frameworks differ from Genre Books in that they are not
about giving advice on building a campaign setting. And they differ from Worldbooks
in that they do not detail the history or politics of a setting. Rather they give a framework for
running a game in a particular genre style. Normally these frameworks keep world details
very light, if they mention it at all, allowing the GM to build his own setting into the genre
framework.

Each of these game lines has been a series of PDFs, with one PDF offering a dozen or so
Character Templates for designing characters and one PDF offering additional rules and rules
advice on running a game in that genre style.
Additional PDFs in each line tend to offer more character templates, enemies or
monsters to fight, equipment or equipment loadouts, and various other rules advice and
expansions. The Dungeon Fantasy line has been particularly prolific, spawning
around 30 PDFs (and more still coming) as well as the standalone
Dungeon Fantasy Roleplaying Game box set.

The Action line places you in the genre of 80's action movies.
Tapping into the spirit of movie franchises starring heroes like John McClane
(Die Hard), James Bond, Rambo, and Ocean's Eleven to set the mood and cinematic
feel. Campaigns can revolve around teams of super-spies, a gang of criminals
looking for the big score, or a classic action hero just trying to survive the
bad-guy of the film.

Don't get trapped in the 80's, though. With a little bit of reworking Action can
easily help you run a cyberpunk game by just adding in cybernetics from
GURPS Ultra-Tech. And you can travel the galaxy larger than life by throwing
force swords and blasters from Ultra-Tech and then throwing in a few starships
from GURPS Spaceships.

Society has fallen, the apocalypse has come and gone, the world is in decay, and the survivors
– our heroes – are left to pick up the pieces After the End. This game
line gets its inspiration from movies like Mad Max and Escape from New York, the Fallout video
game series, and other post-apocalypse fiction.

The Dungeon Fantasy Roleplaying Game (DFRPG) started out
life as a Campaign Framework series for the full GURPS game. After the popularity
of 20+ supplements it was decided to turn it into a standalone box set game,
complete with everything you'll need to play GURPS in a classic hack-and-slash
dungeon delving style. In addition to the five books in the box the game
includes two double-sided color maps, cardboard heroes, and dice – so literally
everything you'll need to start playing. The five books include Adventurers with
character templates for your standard character "classes", Exploits
with rules for running the game, Monsters, Spells, and Dungeons
with the adventure I Smell A Rat. There is an additional Companion book
which you can purchase, and is itself a collection of the three PDFs Magic Items,
Traps, and the adventure follow-up Against the Rat-Men. Last, but
not least, is the ultra-sturdy GM's Screen which includes a Character
Creation Cheat Sheet booklet and Delvers to Go booklet of
pre-made characters.

Hall of Judgment is an announced adventure set
to be released in August 2018.

A wildly popular line of hack-and-slash adventuring for
GURPS, the Dungeon Fantasy line of PDFs has turned into a prolific
one, with over 30 supplements to date (and more coming). The players each
take the role of a classic dungeon delving "class" - a warrior
(knight), rogue (archer), thief, wizard, or one of 7 other professions. You then suit up and loot
up the dungeon, killing monsters and stealing
their stuff. The first four books saw limited print runs, while the entire
series is available in PDF with expansions detailing monsters, magic items, new
professions, and even an adventure or two.

Unlike the Dungeon Fantasy RPG (DFRPG) (above), these books were designed to be expansions to the Basic Set 4th
Edition. Many of them can be used with the DFRPG, but there is the
odd chance of mentioning a rule or character trait that exists only in the Basic
Set, and any page references are going to refer back to the main GURPS
line and not to the DFRPG.

Monster Hunters takes its inspiration from movies, tv shows, and graphic
novels like Van Helsing, Hellboy, League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Buffy the Vampire
Slayer, and Blade where the protagonists hunt down
the monsters that the rest of us don't want to admit are out there. Characters
can take the part of soldiers, holy men, witches, or even monsters turned good
in their attempt to protect humanity for the evils lurking in the shadows.

GURPS doesn't concentrate on pre-made adventures. Being a toolkit type of
game it's hard to develop adventures that are both specific enough to be useful
and generic enough to fit within the GURPS tent. Still, there have been a few
adventures published for GURPS 4th Edition and there were several published for
GURPS 3rd Edition - many of which are still fairly usable in
4th Edition. A
while ago I put together a list of GURPS adventures with the help of Gollum (a
fellow member of the SJGames forums, not the guy from Lord of the Rings). You
can find
that list here.

These adventures are ready to play and written for GURPS 4th Edition.
Caravan to Ein Arris is free to download. I Smell A Rat is part of
the Dungeon Fantasy RPG box set.

While GURPS doesn't do a lot of ready to play adventures, what they try to provide is books chock full of
adventure seeds – encounters, locations, hot spots, and NPCs. These books provide a good
jumping off point for a GM to make his own adventures.

Many of these adventures can be used in GURPS 4th Edition with relatively little work. The exceptions are probably the
Supers and Cyberpunk adventures, since there was a significant change in how "powers" are handled between editions.

GURPS Update is a free set of conversion guidelines to help
you convert characters from GURPS 3rd Edition
into 4th Edition. It
can be handy if you want to use any 3rd Edition
supplements, helping you convert NPCs as well.

These adventures were written as solo adventures - like
the choose-your-own adventure books you may have read, but using the GURPS 3rd Edition
rules. Between the edition conversion and difficulty levels they would take some
work but could be used as the basis for an adventure with GURPS 4th Edition.

All in a Night's Work is fondly remembered as the solo
adventure included in the GURPS Basic
Set 3rd Edition.

The four Conan adventures were based on an adaptation
of Robert E. Howard's Conan series. A deal was worked out to allow the
PDFs of these books to be made available at this time.

For Love of Mother-Not was based on an adaptation of
the Alan Dean Foster's Humanx series. The license has long expired so
it is currently unavailable.

Pyramid Magazine has a long history as a gaming magazine. It started out in 1993 as a
bi-monthly conventionally printed general interest gaming magazine. It lasted in
that form until 1998, when the pressures of printing magazines pushed it into
being reincarnated a web-based 'zine, where it published 4-5 articles a week
every week. In this form it focused more on GURPS, but still ran a substantial
number of general interest gaming articles, and it lasted into 2008 when it was
reincarnated yet again.

The third incarnation of Pyramid Magazine, or
Pyramid Vol. 3, is a monthly PDF magazine focuses on a range of GURPS topics.
Each month the topic of the magazine concentrates broadly on one of Modern,
Fantasy, or Sci-Fi, with the articles concentrating on a specific topic within
those three domains. Each issue is about 40 pages long with 5-6 articles.

Here I have collected links to all of the freebies
available for GURPS. In addition to what is listed here there is a list
of Resources & Play
Aids on the website which includes links to a number of other useful aids,
including PDFs of the standard Character Sheet and NPC Record Card.

GURPS is a registered trademark of Steve Jackson Games,
and the art here is copyrighted by Steve Jackson Games. All rights are reserved by SJ Games. This material is used
here in accordance with the SJ Games online policy.